“And what he does to them—” She shivered slightly. “I’ve heard the reports too. How he turns them into skeletons.”
“I can’t tell if the news teams are that good or the public relations is that crap,” Vic muttered. “You’d think they would want to keep details like that out of the press, especially in this city where there are more ghosts than normal.”
“Hey, I got my fair share of spook friends, all right?” Marco protested. “I don’t think they are all bad or anything, but many people are still iffy on the whole subject. And not everyone can see them so they have nothing to go on but their fears. I’ve heard that those old bars and hotels they hang out at—those haunts or whatever—have been ransacked and defaced. Hell, even that rickety warehouse in ninth ward. I heard it got torched not too long ago.”
“That sounds about right.” Johnny nodded. “Even with everyone knowing ghosts are real now, superstitions still run rampant and many people believe you can banish ghosts by destroying haunts.”
“It is partly true,” Vic clarified. “Haunts are like large mementos—a place with considerable history that gives it a kind of connection to Limbo. Ghosts can seek refuge in them and not have to worry about losing as much stygia while they are here. But in a place like New Orleans with so much history and a large number of people passing on over the centuries, it’ll be a damn long time before they can take them all down. Not to mention all that history you would throw away. They aren’t all dilapidated buildings and no-name warehouses.”
A loud bang in the backyard made everyone jump. “What was that?” the young detective asked and looked at Marco. “Do you guys have a dog or something out there?”
“Nah, only the garden and shed,” he replied. “It sounds like the door flew open or something.”
“Should we investigate?” Johnny asked Vic.
The ghost nodded. “To be safe, yes. I would say it might have been the wind but that never proves to be the case. I’ll stay with Annie.”
He nodded and stood and Marco followed. “I’ll come with ya.”
“I appreciate it,” he replied as the man took a bat off a stand on the wall. It was well maintained and looked like it could have been from the fifties so was perhaps an heirloom or something. The two of them walked into the back yard, passed the garden, and approached the shed. The door was wide open, the wind had begun to pick up, and a light sprinkling of rain had started.
The young detective drew his dagger and his companion held the bat up as they walked cautiously forward. Johnny was the first to peek inside and determined easily that there was little place to hide. A pathway through the middle was clear but tools and other objects lined the walls and sides. “I see nothing here,” he stated and lowered his blade. “Does anything look out of the ordinary to you?”
“Nah,” Marco said but paused when he looked at a part of a wall where a rack was hanging. “Hey, wait—our ax is gone.”
“Your ax?” Johnny asked before another noise drew their attention. Music could now be heard from the house.
“Hey, what’s wrong with your radio?” Vic asked as the sound system activated. It played a high-energy jazz number at first before it began to slow to a crawling, creepy drone.
“I don’t know,” Annie responded and frowned at it as the lights in the house began to flicker. “I don’t have my phone plugged in so it shouldn’t play anything or even be on.”
More banging issued from the front of the house this time, outside the front door. The ghost detective turned, drew his pistol, and held an arm out to tell Annie to back away. “It looks like we got here just in time,” he muttered and pulled the hammer back. “Sometimes, I hate being right.”
Chapter Thirteen
A hefty kick to the front door cracked it. Vic approached as Annie ran into a room, opened a closet, and searched for something. The second kick broke the door off the frame and a large figure in a tattered coat and cowl stood in the entrance, holding a sharpened ax.
“Hello again, you ugly bastard.” The ghost detective sneered as he fired several shots. All were strikes but unlike the time on the road, they didn’t seem to affect him at all. “Ah, shit.”
The brute approached but staggered following a loud boom that shredded his coat. Vic turned to see Annie with a shotgun. “Are those exorcist rounds or buckshot?”
“Birdshot!” she hollered over the rain and the ringing in her ears.
“Birdshot? Why bother?” he asked as the intruder regained his balance.
“You always use birdshot as a warning shot.” She held the gun again up. “This one is buckshot, though.” She fired and it slammed into the attacker and knocked him on his back.
“This one is different—definitely possessed,” the ghost noted and they watched him intently as he sat silently and picked the ax up. “Dammit, where’s Johnny?”
“Get back to the house!” Johnny yelled and he and Marco raced toward it. By the time they reached the back steps, however, the door had slammed shut. The rain fell heavily now and he pulled on the door. “It’s stuck!”
The resident pushed him aside and tried to pull it himself but to no avail. “I just fixed the damn thing! To hell with it. We’ll bust it down!” he decided and took a step back.
“Can’t we simply go around?”
“No time—on three!” the man ordered and they prepared to kick the door down. “Three!” They kicked at the same time and hurled the door off the frame. Marco rushed inside as the killer stood with slow determination. “Get away from my sister, asshole!” he shouted and raised his bat, which lit up with blue phantasma.
“What the hell?” Johnny muttered as the man pounded the bat into the killer’s chest and flung him down the hall. A spirit manifested in a swirl of dark mist and left the body briefly before it forced itself in again.
“Johnny, it’s possessed!” Vic shouted and threw him the revolver. “Take him out!”
He caught the gun and ordered Annie and Marco to move before he fanned the hammer and fired as many shots as he could. Each one struck home and the spirit inside appeared briefly before it ducked inside again. This one was stubborn and lunged into a charge aimed directly at Annie.
Marco leapt in front of him and swung the bat into his head, but the brute caught him by the throat and slammed him into the wall. Johnny ran forward and continued to fire the pistol as he drew his dagger. The killer swung his ax and caught him in the shoulder. The blade sliced through his jacket and blood sprayed onto the ceiling. The young detective hissed in pain before a kick catapulted him down the hall and he dropped the gun.
A similar cut appeared on Vic’s shoulder as he came up behind the attacker and reached into his back to grasp the spirit within. His ghostly hand coiled around the spirit and he realized this was no ordinary ghost. He tried to pull it out of the body but it would not budge.
Annie darted in from the side and held the shotgun point-blank to the side of the intruder’s head, but he took hold of it and pushed it up as she fired. He pulled it out of her hands and batted her aside before he grasped Vic’s arm, pulled him off, and hurled him away.
Marco had found his feet and approached the killer, his bat prepared like he was about to hit a home run. When he swung, the attacker met him with what was most likely their ax that he had stolen. The blade met the wood and should have cut through easily. Instead, the two weapons clashed and struggled against one another while blue phantasma illuminated around the bat again.
“I’ll send you back to Hell with a cracked skull, you bastard!” the man threatened, pushed away from his adversary, and swung wildly. He hit him in the ribs and shoulder before the killer raised an arm to block the other blows and swiped with his ax. The blow caught Marco in the leg and as he fell to one knee, his attacker’s boot struck him in the face to leave him sprawled on the floor with a broken nose.
Almost in slow motion, the brute lifted his ax over the young man’s head, but bullets entered his back and a couple of shots dislodged t
he weapon from his hands. The killer glanced over his shoulder at Johnny, who fired from the floor. When he turned away, his ax was swung at him by Vic, who buried it into his chest and flung him into the wall.
Seemingly unaffected by the impact, he grasped Vic’s ribcage as he pulled the ax out, swung it into a downward arc, and hacked into the ghost’s chest. He was able to pull away before it did any real damage to his form, but Johnny uttered a pained grunt as he looked at his shirt and found that more blood appeared on his chest, and his vision began to waver.
“What the hell?” the ghost detective muttered. He checked his wound, which was only a slight scratch across his bones.
Annie had begun to stir and the killer marched to her, grasped her by the leg, and hauled her closer to him before he hoisted her over his shoulder.
“Let go of her!” Marco demanded and tried to stand, but his wounded leg was unable to support him and he toppled each time.
Vic rushed forward and attempted to rip the spirit from the body again but was backhanded out of the way. As he turned toward the door, another shot rang out but not from Johnny. This one came from the entrance and the brute stopped in his tracks and looked at a bullet hole going through the ax wound the ghost detective had inflicted.
He fell to his knees and dropped Annie before he collapsed. As his body turned to dust, an orb of white-and-black phantasma appeared. More shots were fired but it darted to the wall and disappeared through it.
“Dammit!” a familiar voice yelled and Valerie ran to Annie and examined her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” the other woman assured her and leaned against the wall. “Check the others.”
“Hey, how you feeling, kid?” Vic asked as he helped Johnny to sit.
“I’m still a breather, so all right so far.” He wheezed and tried to clear his head. “Who saved our asses?”
The new figure knelt to help him up as his vision steadied and his eyes finally cleared enough to see. “Valerie?”
She nodded. “I got your text and wanted to check in personally.” She looked at the damage and bloodstains. “You’ve caused more ruckus in a few hours than I’ve seen in a week. I’m beginning to think you might be bad luck.”
“Well, given the situation, I think I’m simply in the wrong places at the wrong time,” he muttered and dropped his head back against the wall. “Or the right time. It’s hard to tell, honestly.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Agh, that hurts!” Marco yelped as he applied alcohol to the wound on his leg with a cotton pad.
“You’re telling me.” Johnny winced as he tended the wound on his shoulder. “At least that ax was sharp. I barely felt it when it sliced through me.”
“No kidding.” The other man reached for the medical tape. “But if that was our ax he took from the shed, it wouldn’t be that sharp. I’m surprised it wasn’t rusted. We barely use it and it has been sitting out there for years.”
“How about now?” Vic asked and held it up. The two men looked at what appeared to be a normal tree-felling ax, if slightly weathered.
Marco blinked a few times to clear his eyes. “That is ours, but there’s no way it’s the same one that brute used,” he said in surprise. “I didn’t get a great look at it during all that commotion but from what I did see and feel, it was way stronger than that.”
“You’re an empath, right?” the ghost detective asked and lowered the weapon to hang at his side. “What you did with the bat isn’t normal for someone who is only a specter.”
He nodded as he continued to dress his leg. “Yeah, I guess so. That blue stuff appears around ghosts and if I have a weapon—but only some weapons, though.” He pulled a strip of tape and threw the roll to Johnny. “Like the bat, my old bike chain, and the pair of brass knuckles my uncle gave me. It’s a neat trick and keeps some of the douchebag spooks away from me.”
“It looks like something similar to a ghost’s memento,” Vic commented. “Or at least those who use weapons as a memento. Our pal here seems to have an ax fixation but normally, they bring their mementos with them and don’t have to take them from someone’s yard.” He tossed the ax to him. “When the spirit disappeared, it returned to normal.”
Marco looked at it and shook his head. “This has been a weird day, man.” He clicked his tongue and looked at Vic. “Should I be touching this?”
“It is your ax,” Johnny replied, his focus on his shoulder “Your prints would be on there anyway. Besides we have an actual officer here to vouch for us. Speaking of which, I have to talk to her and check on Annie. Do you wanna come with, Marco?”
The man nodded. “Yeah, let’s—ah!” he hissed in pain as he tried to stand and fell back on the chair. “Ah, dammit…I’ll be there. Give me a minute.”
Vic nodded. “I’ve taken big cuts to the leg and they ain’t fun when you try to put weight on it. Take your time. She’s all right.” He left the two to recover and stepped into one of the bedrooms where the two women were talking.
“Are you sure you can’t think of a reason someone would target you?” the young officer asked and Annie shook her head.
“No, not at all, especially some…thing like that.” She looked at her and Vic. “What the hell was it?”
Valerie looked at the ghost detective. “Honestly, I’ve got nothing. It didn’t appear to be any type of ghost I’m familiar with.”
“It wouldn’t be.” Vic looked at his hands. “When I tried to pull it out of the skin, it felt unnatural—something I thought I would never feel again given what I am.” He put his hands in his jacket pockets. “I’m familiar with phantoms, wraiths, geist, demons, vamps, shades, zombies, and even kelpie and oni and more exotic fare. I’ve never seen anything like this. It doesn’t fit any description.”
The officer sighed and frowned in thought. “Was it the same one you saw on the road?”
He tilted his head. “It looked the same but this one was a spirit possessing a physical body. When we fought him on the road, it was a spirit strong enough to act like it had a physical body, but my shots still hurt it.” He looked at her gun. “I need to talk to Johnny about getting actual exorcist rounds.”
Valerie looked at the marks on his chest. “Are you all right? I’m not exactly sure what we can do to heal a ghost.”
“Whiskey is as good as anything,” Vic muttered and leaned against the doorjamb. “I wish I could drown my sorrows in liquor but over the years, the bastards learned how to swim.”
She chuckled as she rubbed Annie’s back and looked at him. “Do you still feel pain in the afterlife? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Kind of…but not like you experience in life,” he told her. “It’s more of a sense of nothingness. When you get a deep wound in life, you can feel the wind blowing through it. If you are hurt as a ghost, it means your soul is getting torn apart. While you can walk through things that would kill you in life, enough damage to a ghost means…well, Oblivion. Until it heals, you have this hole or space in you that you have to deal with.” He rubbed the back of his skull. “Johnny has to take the brunt of it, unfortunately. He still has blood to spill.”
“So what’s the deal with the two of you?” Valerie asked. “I have some ghosts I know and some people have ghost friends or friends who have passed away who they see during special events or whatnot. But from what I’ve seen, you two are joined at the hip.”
“Yeah…” He drifted away and stared out of the door to where Johnny and Marco were talking. “We’re probably gonna be working together while we’re in town, so I guess I can fill you in a little. And Annie will probably have to answer a slew of questions after a while, so fair is fair.” He shut the door. “It’s not my place to tell you the whole story. Johnny can give you the details some other time. But when the kid was an actual kid—I’m talking thirteen—he was pulled into the ghost world.”
“Pulled?” Valerie questioned. “How does that happen? I’ve heard of people who stumble on portals or something li
ke that but never anyone being forced into the ghost world unless they are dead.”
“I have no clue,” he admitted. “From what he told me at the time and what he remembers to this day, he stayed up late watching TV, drifted off to sleep for a while, and when he woke up, he was in the ghost world. He thought he was dreaming at first. I don’t blame him. I thought the same thing when I arrived.” He tilted his head back as he sorted through his memories. “What is crazy is he ended up in a building I was looking into for a case. It was near what we call the ‘Big Dark’ in the afterlife. It has a more official name—some Latin thing or another—but that’s what everyone born in a year with four digits calls it.”
“Abaddon?” Valerie suggested.
Vic pointed to her and nodded. “That’s it, yeah. It doesn’t sound Latin, though.”
“It’s Hebrew,” Annie stated. “It’s from the Bible and means an abyss.”
“Well, it’s certainly accurate,” he responded thoughtfully. “The Bible has basically become a thesaurus nowadays, huh? Anyway, the Big Dark is this void of nothing. If a black hole could die—and not in the scientific mumbo jumbo way—but simply croak, it would be the Big Dark. You fall in and probably only God knows what happens to you. Most say you fall forever or are obliterated. Certainly, no one has returned outside of ghost folklore, although I suppose that would have more credence nowadays.”
He stopped and adjusted his cap. “Sorry…sidetracked. Anyway, the Big Dark messes with phantasma, stygia, and all the ghostly magical BS you probably kind of know about. I’ve never heard of a ghost of any type that can bring a human into the afterlife outside of a reaper, and those dudes are basically robots so they wouldn’t have anything to do with this. But if someone else was capable of it, being able to do it near the Big Dark is frightening.”
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